1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to creation of stereo images, and more particularly, to creating a stereo image adaptively according to the characteristics of an input image and reproducing the created stereo image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, research has been conducted on broadcasting three-dimensional (3D) images through digital televisions (DTV). To broadcast 3D images that are similar to actual images viewed by naked human eyes, multi-view 3D images should be created, transmitted, received, and reproduced by a 3D display device. However, since multi-view 3D images contain a large amount of data, they cannot be accommodated by a channel bandwidth used in an existing digital broadcasting system. Thus, priority is being given to studies on the transmission and reception of stereo images.
With respect to 3D image-related technology, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) developed the MPEG-2 multi-view profile in 1996 and a standard for compression of stereo images and multi-view images is on its way to completion. Related organizations studying 3D images are also actively conducting research on the transmission and reception of 3D images through DTV broadcasting and are currently researching transmission and reception of high definition (HD) stereo images. It is to be noted that HD stereo images indicate interlaced images with resolutions of 1920×1080 or progressive images with resolutions of 1024×720.
However, since the bandwidth of a transmission channel that transmits MPEG-2 encoded images is limited to 6 MHz in DTV broadcasting, only one HD image can be transmitted through one channel. As a result, it is difficult to transmit an HD stereo image (composed of a left view image and a right view image).
A conventional approach to the problem described above is to transmit an HD stereo image after reducing the amount of data of the HD stereo image to that of an HD mono image by sampling the HD stereo image, i.e., a left view image and a right view image, at a ratio of 1:2 to reduce the total amount of data of the HD stereo image by ½. Another approach to the problem described above is to transmit an HD stereo image after reducing the amount of data of the HD stereo image by reducing the size of one of the left view image and the right view image. However, since such conventional approaches reduce the amount of data through sub-sampling or size reduction, image quality degradation is inevitable.